Kiesza was this year’s big winner at the Juno Awards, a rare victory for a Calgary artist at an event so often dominated by artists from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Next year, however, Calgary itself is guaranteed to be the big winner. Not only will the Junos take place there, but it will also mark the grand opening of the long-anticipated National Music Centre (NMC), a museum and cultural hub devoted to Canada’s rich—and often underappreciated—musical history. The NMC will be housed in a 160,000-sq.-foot building in Calgary’s East Village, with exhibition and performance spaces, as well as studios and educational programs.

But the NMC will focus on living history, too, and over the course of Juno weekend, from Mar. 13 to 15, it hired acclaimed photographer Norman Wong to set up a pop-up portrait studio at the Junos in Hamilton, where he was to capture the artists who are busy creating the future of Canadian music.

Wong first started photographing musicians in Toronto in the early 2000s, when he fell in with Broken Social Scene. That band’s 2002 album You Forgot It in People became an international phenomenon, gave Toronto’s music scene an enormous boost of inspiration, and helped usher in a new wave of Canadian talent, one that hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down since. It marked a generational change, one in which younger artists took advantages of a new, wired world and didn’t wait for the music industry’s blessing. It was an attitude that informed everyone from Arcade Fire to Drake to Kiesza. “It was something different,” says Wong. “For me, it was Broken Social Scene and the whole independent rock boom coming out of that. The success of Arcade Fire and all those other acts opened the door to a new generation of music. I was never really a music guy before that, but it was just ‘right time, right place,’ and I fell in love with the music.”

Related:

While doing press photos for Broken Social Scene’s label, Arts and Crafts, Wong would do black-and-white portraits after the shoots, just for his own files. Why black and white? “Because then, the focus is not on the clothes, just the person,” says Wong. “It goes straight to the subject. Nothing too crazy, almost like a coin; I was a big collector of coins when I was younger. It’s a collection of everyone shot the same way, but in different variations.”

When Arts and Crafts celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013, Wong was asked to photograph all of its artists he hadn’t already shot and to mount an exhibition. Seeing how Wong started out, as he says, “trying to document the whole Canadian music scene from the early 2000s onward, working with the NMC helps me fulfill that dream.” Lately, Wong has been photographing a new generation of Toronto musicians revolving around an artist and a label: Drake’s OVO label, specifically Majid Jordan, who appeared on Drake’s massive (but Juno-losing) hit Hold On, We’re Going Home.

Whom was Wong most excited about on Juno weekend? “Mac DeMarco,” he says, speaking of the transient musician who’s spent significant time in Edmonton, Vancouver, Montreal, Duncan, B.C., and now Brooklyn. DeMarco is decidedly anti-glamour; on the photo shoot’s call sheet, DeMarco was the only one who specified “no makeup.” Indeed, DeMarco—beloved for his on-stage pranks, goofy YouTube videos and questionable fashion choices, all of which threaten to overshadow his genuine musical talent—is the Canadian musician most likely to wind up naked during a gig. “He is who he is,” laughs Wong. “I think what he’s doing is fun and exciting and genuine and entertaining. There’s no need to put makeup on him. Why would you? Actually, everyone was very casual and we just let them be who they are.”

And what about the star of the weekend? “Kiesza was great. I’ve liked what she’s been doing during her big boom in the last little bit, her collaborations with Joey Bada$$ and, most recently, Diplo and Skrillex. It’s exciting to watch her explode onto that world.”

Lights, middle, performs with the Sam Roberts Band during the 2015 Juno Awards in Hamilton, Ont., on Sunday, March 15, 2015. (Nathan Denette/CP)

For an awards show that eschewed Canadian music’s essential weirdness at most every turn, the Juno Awards picked itself a perfectly weird host city in Hamilton. A steel town in a state of seemingly perpetual renaissance, it’s a heady mix of seedy bars and vintage shops, a halfway-there city grappling against Toronto’s yawning shadow and slouching toward Bethlehem. For years, Hamilton has yearned for the bloom of creativity—its abandoned brick warehouses serving as the planter box—and all it’s gotten are uncertain vines; the cold of winter staunches the warmth of the art crawls and concerts, and each summer brings another shot at asserting its redemption. But it feels definitively like a town on the cusp, a pot that’s ready to runneth over.

But the thrill of that weirdness was hardly reflected in the 2015 Juno weekend’s proceedings. Host Jacob Hoggard, frontman of anthem-makers Hedley, made a crack about diversity, noting the absence of comedian Russell Peters—the kind of self-aware jab that is only truly funny if there are actions that follow it up. Tanya Tagaq, whose throat-sung record Animism was one of the most essential and exciting Canadian releases in recent memory, won Aboriginal album of the year, but lost out in the less-niche alternative album category. Magic!, a mostly white band whose biggest hit appropriates a reggae style, defeated what may be Drake’s best song for single of the year. (Unsurprising, based on the rapper’s strange lack of success on the Juno stage, but that’s another story altogether.)

Sure, it wasn’t all bad. EDM—once an outsider music that’s come a long way from its days played in furtive after-hours clubs, having found itself into the veins of mainstream pop—was given its due with Kiesza’s weekend-leading three Juno wins, including breakthrough artist of the year, triumphing over artists like Glenn Morrison, a classically trained musician who has become a top EDM DJ, too. And R&B lothario the Weeknd was recognized as the artist of the year, even if that notice comes two years too late. But the Junos, once again, failed to revel in the diversity and weirdness that makes up the spine of Canadian music.

“There’s a nominee for every taste up there,” said Leighton James, one half of EDM duo Adventure Club, as they and (at least she was there) Tagaq presented the album of the year prize to the absent Leonard Cohen.

Weirdness runs in our blood. It’s what makes us innovate, makes Canadians have the derring-do in the face of bigger markets—like the vast pop-culture monolith that is the United States—and separates us from the pack when we try to be ourselves. “I think it’s what pretty much defined us,” said Alex Foster of Montreal-based Your Favourite Enemies, nominated for best rock album, flanked on the red carpet by a bandmate dressed in a tall Russian ushanka and military regalia. “Everybody’s playing in little basements, everyone’s a little weird,” said Mac DeMarco.

Alanis Morissette performs during the 2015 Juno Awards in Hamilton, Ont., on Sunday, March 15, 2015. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

Artists like k.d. lang—2013’s inductee into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame—and the Barenaked Ladies are curios in the pop firmament. And it may be hard to imagine, but even Alanis Morissette, inducted this year, comes from a place of what Jagged Little Pill co-writer Glen Ballard called a “courageous risk-taking.” “I think it was this convergence of a time that people were ready to hear autobiographical, vulnerable music,” Morissette said after the show, “and I happened to be on the crest of a wave that was already happening. So I grabbed my surfboard and just went for it.”

Instead, the Junos offered up a ceremony that hit every predictable note. The Arkells won best rock album in their hometown. Even Michael Bublé managed to win the Fan Choice Award in a year where he wasn’t nominated for anything else, which felt a lot like the Oscars giving Best Actor to Billy Crystal. And maybe Morissette was the canary in the coal mine, after all: A decade after she subversively stripped down to a nude bodysuit to protest censorship at Edmonton’s Juno Awards, here she was in Hamilton, clutching a lifetime achievement award as she told the gathered press, “I love Justin,” as in Bieber. The 2015 Junos reminded us that while Canada stretches a massive expanse, our national showcase is flat as the Prairies.

“We’re just a little bit crazy because we’re Canadian,” said Morissette, the night’s undeniable darling. Well, the Junos didn’t show that. Isn’t that ironic?

Dave Bidini, the lead singer of the now-defunct, boundary-pushing Rheostatics and the frontman of the still-at-it Bidiniband, has always been a bit of an odd duck within Canadian music. Just how weird became clear to him during a Rheostatics performance years ago in Melville, Sask., a small town of a few thousand, at a bar with a wall festooned with framed photos of past performers. “They were all these strange misfit Prairie bands,” he said, from a gold-haired new wave band to a massive muscleman who covered his body with drum pads while playing the keytar as a one-man show. “I remember staring at them, and then realizing that we were also a misfit band—we were this itinerant band heading out across the country. And rather than that lineage of those handful of bands that become commercially popular in a mainstream sense, I realized the real spine of art and music in Canada is all the other bands.

“Those are the bands I’ve always felt closest to. I can’t relate to Bryan Adams, I can’t relate to Alanis Morissette—they’re their own realities, they’re definitely not the realities of the bands that I’ve ever forged a bond with. I think once you embrace that [weirdness], it’s easier to be comfortable being an artist in Canada.”

That’s the weirdness that, in many ways, defines Canadian music. Sure, we have our superstars, and what country doesn’t—Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Nickelback, Anne Murray, et al.—but the thing that separates us is the oddness. We may not be defined by a genre that is uniquely ours, or have a through-line tradition of even a specific kind of sound, but what is ours is the way that many of our artists innovate and jostle within the genres themselves: k.d. lang’s oddball attitude, Tanya Tagaq’s beautiful throat-singing, Mac DeMarco’s slacker jazz. That’s in part a product of Canada’s sheer size, and the fact that we are so close to the United States, says Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, founder of Weird Canada, a blog that sets out to document the immense range of creative expression across Canada. “We are vast and disparate, and we find ourselves having to shout louder,” she said. “It’s the cabin fever and the loneliness—I don’t think you can underestimate how vast this country is, it’s totally overwhelming, and the lines are so big that sometimes it can feel like, ‘Is there a shared identity here at all?’ ”

The Juno Awards, of course, won’t reflect any of our unique strangeness. Not that it ever did: Though the Junos were named after Pierre Juneau, who as the first president of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission was a champion of Canadian content regulations—and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ mandate is to “promote and celebrate Canadian music and artists”—the awards have historically been a celebration of what is commercially successful. (The Album of the Year nominees are determined by album sales.) This year’s iteration looks to be a celebration of glossy EDM-driven songbird Kiesza, and pop-rock fun.-flecked anthem purveyors Hedley, and Nickelback (no descriptor needed). Not an oddball in sight.

So Bidini is taking things into his own hands. He and three other Canadian musicians will be hosting Hoserpalooza, billed as an “un-Juno” clip-show event at Toronto’s Royal Theatre on Wednesday, to showcase that “strange, coming-of-age music that had to exist in the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s in order for us to get to where we are.” But the animating sentiment for Bidini’s night highlights the way that the Junos have been raging against the dying of the light for a number of a years.

In fact, this year is as good an example as any to show just how poorly Canadian music’s big night is reflecting the music it’s supposed to be showcasing. Tagaq, for instance, has been one of the best stories in the country’s music scene, winning the Polaris Prize for her stunning album Animism, a record that was both essentially her and essentially Canadian; DeMarco contributed his slacker-rock record Salad Days; Owen Pallett released a critically adored album. They’re all reflective of the kind of essential weirdness that has come to define much of Canadian music these days, and yet at Canadian music’s biggest showcase, they will be hardly represented: Tagaq’s nominations have been sidelined into genre-specific categories, DeMarco is nominated only in the “breakthrough artist” field, Pallett will receive nothing, and none of them will be performing (according to a tentative list at press time). Rather than reflect the broad, odd diversity of Canada’s sounds, the Junos are paving them over and putting up a bland parking lot.

“Canadian culture is all about nuance,” said Flanagan. “It’s all about secret weirdness and basements and attics and garages. And we have this incredibly rich, fertile experimental music and history and culture that just isn’t really seen—it’s always just bubbling up under the edges.”

Granted, Canadian music has come a long way. Bidini acknowledges that’s the case: “Everybody wanted music in Canada to mirror what was happening in America or in England, because we had these two colonial influences pressing down upon us. I think residue from that time still exists, and unfortunately it still is a presence of culture in Canada where we do turn outside our borders instead of looking inwards,” he said. “But over the course of 35 years, we’ve come so far.”

Just how much the Junos must be our national showcase is a question unto itself. Still, the Junos still feel like an inadequate reflection of what quintessentially makes Canadian music special. After all, it’s been just two years since k.d. lang was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the 2013 Junos, where she shouted out the “quirkmeister that is inside all of us” and made it clear she was a product of her country. “I think the fact that I’m standing here receiving this award says more about Canada than it does about me,” she said at the time, “because only in Canada could there be such a freak as k.d. lang receiving this award.”

“With their massive platform, it’s the Junos’ responsibility,” said Bidini. “They should try to be a little bit truer.”

The Juno Awards take place on Sunday, March 15, on CTV. Maclean’s will be in Hamilton—stay tuned for a recap of the night.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/has-canadian-music-lost-its-weirdness/feed/0Five stories we’re watching in Canada todayhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/five-stories-were-watching-in-canada-today/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/five-stories-were-watching-in-canada-today/#respondTue, 10 Mar 2015 09:19:30 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=690649March 10: A preview of Sen. Mike Duffy's trial, the body of a Canadian soldier comes back from Iraq, and the cost of immigration

The body of a Canadian soldier killed late Friday in Iraq is due to arrive home today. A repatriation ceremony for Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron will be held at CFB Trenton, Ont. starting at about 3:40 p.m. ET. Gov. Gen. David Johnson and Defence Minister Jason Kenny will be among those paying their respects before Doiron’s casket is taken to Toronto in a motorcade along the ‘Highway of Heroes.’

DUFFY TRIAL WILL BEGIN WITH FOCUS ON RULES

The provocative opening statements of the Crown and defence might start Sen. Mike Duffy’s fraud and bribery trial off with a bang, but what follows in the early stages is expected to be decidedly less dramatic. The first few weeks are expected to dwell on the arcane world of Senate financial rules and regulations.

PRIME MINISTER HARPER STOKING PREJUDICE, CHARGES TRUDEAU

Justin Trudeau is accusing the Harper government of deliberately stoking fear and prejudice against Muslim Canadians – employing the same kind of rhetoric that led to some of Canada’s most shameful displays of racism in the past. The Liberal leader drew a parallel Monday between the current government’s rhetoric about Muslims and other “dark episodes” in Canada’s history such as the internment of Ukrainian, Japanese and Italian Canadians during both world wars.

TORIES WORRY IMMIGRATION STUDY WILL RILE BASE

A briefing note for a Conservative MP suggests the government is worried about how spending on immigration programs is going over with its base. The House of Commons immigration committee is currently studying how government-funded settlement services can better help the economic integration of immigrants. A note which appears to have been prepared for Costas Menegakis, the parliamentary secretary for immigration, says the party’s base will learn as a result that the government spends close to $1 billion a year on those efforts.

FIVE IDEAS TO IMPROVE THE JUNO AWARDS

As the Junos roar into Hamilton this weekend, it’s clear the venerable awards show has grown a bit rusty. The Canadian Press considers five ways the Junos might be improved.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/five-stories-were-watching-in-canada-today/feed/0Juno recap: In defence of Justin Bieberhttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/juno-recap-in-defense-of-justin-bieber/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/juno-recap-in-defense-of-justin-bieber/#commentsMon, 31 Mar 2014 22:37:26 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=533297Booing Bieber says more about us than it does about him

]]>Well, those were the Junos. Chris Hadfield – remind me, who is he and what has he done? I’ve never heard about him – appeared at a major event yet again. Since just one performance with a backing chorus would be too few, two songs from the night enjoyed choral support. Serena Ryder’s Harmony was nominated for album of the year – just one year after it was nominated for a Juno for best adult alternative album. Robin Thicke, the son of a man with dual citizenship who sang a catchy summer tune with questionable lyrics, was set to perform to some controversy – but he conveniently backed out, citing vocal rest, sucking even that crisis of faith out from the itinerary. CTV’s own “top moments of Junos 2014” featured this salient line: “No JUNOs is complete without a Jim Cuddy!”

And that’s all you need to really know about an award show that was the expression of a mutual-admiration society (albeit a warm, affectionate, genuine-seeming one) that painted within the lines and hit all the expected Canadian touchstones. With last night’s Junos, time was a flat circle – or, at least, a laser-engraved glassy statuette.

The one moment that did stand out, did so for all the wrong reasons. Justin Bieber’s hordes of fans lifted the bad-boy teen to an expected victory in the Fan Choice category, but when his name was announced by the Olympic gold-medal-winning women’s curling team, it was met by an equal smattering of cheers and boos.

Forget for a minute the easy joke, which is to shake our heads at how un-Canadian this is. What happened here? The world media has snapped up the story, charging Bieber’s home country with finally giving up on the 20-year-old, but the reality is that it’s been probably four full years since the Stratford, Ont. native has registered as a truly Canadian star; his move to the U.S., coupled with the smash sophomore album World 2.0 that launched him into the pop stratosphere, makes him feel like an ex-pat. Four years ago happens to be the last time Bieber made the time of day for the Junos, with this performance of K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag, as part of the Young Artists for Haiti project:

So all that feels like a betrayal, yes, and it might have been nice to reward an artist who was actually in the crowd. (Drake, for what it’s worth, shields himself from these claims by hosting an annual hip-hop festival in Toronto and shouting out his city at every turn.) But it’s likely, too, an indictment by the hoi polloi of how Bieber has embarrassed us with his off-hours antics: he’s been charged with graffiti in Brazil and arrested on a suspected DUI; he’s allegedly egged an L.A. neighbour’s house, and recently turned himself in to Toronto police on charges that he assaulted a limo driver.

It’s not great, and it’s certainly nothing to endorse. But booing, in this instance, amounted to a simpering act of pettiness.

Back in the days of the Ancient Greeks, booing was the right and realm of the audience, but it was in response to performance – a gladiatorial match, a theatrical show. But there was no performance to cast judgment on here, though; what some Juno attendees booed was the announcement that someone they did not care for was recognized for his ability to make his targeted demographic vote for him online. So the booing we heard at the Junos felt of the sort we get in sports: the unbridled, partisan, reason-damning boos by the home crowd of a referee for daring to choose a side that wasn’t theirs.

Unfortunately for them, those are the breaks. Like it or not, being a pop-music artist means being a big personality – that’s just the nature of the beast. Elders would like to believe that their time was better, it’s always been the case. The rock of the 80s were fuelled by drugs and alcohol; the laconic folksters of the 70s were rampantly sexual; Madonna is the ur-figure of this kind of behaviour; even the thrusting Elvis and the Beatles, with their fervour-inducing coifs, were censured, prejudged and hated on thanks in large part to their teeny-bopper fan base. Every era has had their version of foam finger feel-ups and DUI arrests, though the actual signifiers themselves have been different.

Booing a pop singer winning an award tells us that, unable to accept his accept his success, we will instead do all that we can to make him feel bad. Some might claim the booing came from a place of concern, that Bieber needs a shake and a wake-up call. Really, it suggests a frustration with the fact that someone whose personal life is in shambles, whose music can be dismissed as vapid (even though it’s actually gone to more interesting places on his most recent effort, Journals), can be rewarded. That, despite the fact that the best way to make your voice heard, as arts consumers, is still choosing what you wish to consume.

It’s perfectly normal and well within one’s right to wish Bieber was less of a boor. But booing, that one-dimensional phrase of derision, only tells us that people cannot fathom that someone like that could be rewarded. And that says a lot more about the boo-er than it does about the boor.

Last night in Regina, Sask., the 42nd Juno Awards honoured the best in Canadian music. The ceremony was hosted by Michael Bublé. Performers included multiple Juno-award nominee Carly Rae Jepsen, along with the Saskatoon band The Sheepdogs, Montreal’s Metric, Toronto’s Serena Ryder and Billy Talent, and Vancouver’s Hannah Georgas and Marianas Trench. Absent was Justin Bieber, who is currently touring Europe. However the 19-year-old pop star managed to pick up the Juno Fan Choice award.

Here is a complete list of the winners:

SUNDAY:

Album of the Year: Carly Rae Jepsen, Kiss

Single of the Year: Carly Rae Jepsen, Call Me Maybe

Group of the Year: Marianas Trench

Breakthrough Group of the Year: Monster Truck

Songwriter of the Year: Leonard Cohen, for Amen, Going Home and Show Me the Place (co-writer Patrick Leonard) from Old Ideas.

k.d. lang walked around the stage, looking at the audience around her, and thanked them saying: “I think the fact that I’m standing here accepting this award says more about Canada than it does about me.” The rest of her speech made people cry.

KD LANG. Enough said.#junos2013 pic.twitter.com/iuTHUQlALpRon Lopata

"Every single person in this nation has the right to be themselves" -KD LangCanadas Talent

"Only in Canada could there be such a freak as k.d. lang receiving this award… I’m telling you…it is OKAY to be YOU!!" k.d. langJeanne Beker

k.d. lang was sure to give a shoutout to Rita MacNeil and Stompin’ Tom Connors, both of whom passed away in recent weeks, saying only in Canada could three singers like them become icons.

Kd lang shoutout to Stomping Tom & Rita McNeil. .. ‘be who you are… Live your life’ She went up even higher in my books #classyLori Keith

KD Lang was indeed barefoot … As she said .. Cdns make so many things possible .. Rita,Stomping Tom .. They make us proud #cdnpoliCarolyn Bennett

I have been listening to KD Lang my entire life, so when she got up to accept her Canadian Music Hall of Fame award and sing, I cried a bit.cass

While k.d. lang is perhaps most famous for her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, which moved the entire world when she performed it at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, every song she performs becomes an instant classic.

SINGLE OF THE YEAR
Billy Talent for Viking Death March – Warner
Carly Rae Jepsen for Call Me Maybe – 604*Universal
Hedley for for Kiss You Inside Out, Universal
Serena Ryder for Stompa Serenader Source*Universal
The Sheepdogs for The Way It Is – WEA*Warner

INTERNATIONAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Maroon 5 for Overexposed – A&M*Universal
Mumford & Sons for Babel – Island*Universal
One Direction for Up All Night – Columbia*Sony
Rod Stewart for Merry Christmas, Baby – Verve*Universal
Taylor Swift for Red – Big Machine*Universal

COUNTRY ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Chad Brownlee for Love Me Or Leave Me – MDM*Universal
Dallas Smith for Jumped Right In – 604*Universal
Dean Brody for Dirt – Open Road*Universal
Emerson Drive for Roll – Open Road*Universal
Johnny Reid for Fire It Up – Johnny Mac*Universal

ADULT ALTERNATIVE ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Bahamas for Barchords – Brushfire*Universal
Kathleen Edwards for Voyageur – MapleMusic*Universal
Royal Wood for We Were Born To Glory – MapleMusic*Universal
Serena Ryder for Harmony – Serenader Source*Universal
The Barr Brothers for The Barr Brothers – Secret City*Universal

ALTERNATIVE ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Hannah Georgas for Hannah Georgas – Dine Alone*Universal
Japandroids for Celebration Rock – Polyvinyl*Outside
Metric for Synthetica – Metric Music International*Universal
Said The Whale for Little Mountain – Hidden Pony*Universal
Stars Soft for The North – Revolution*Universal

POP ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Carly Rae Jepsen for Kiss – 604*Universal
Justin Bieber for Believe – Island Def Jam*Universal
Kristina Maria Lupo for Tell The World – One*Fontana North
Nelly Furtado for The Spirit Indestructible – Interscope*Universal
Victoria Duffield for Shut Up and Dance – Warner

ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Big Wreck for Albatross, Anthem*Warner
Billy Talent for Dead Silence, Warner
Rush for Clockwork Angels – Anthem*Universal
The Sheepdogs for The Sheepdogs, WEA*Warner
The Tragically Hip for Now For Plan A – Universal

TRADITIONAL JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Brian Dickinson Quartet for Other Places, Addo
Cory Weeds Quartet for Up A Step – Cellar Live*Outside
Dave Young/Terry Promane Octet for Volume One – Modica*Independent
Murley, Brickert & Wallace for Test of Time – Cornerstone*Outside
Shirantha Beddage for Identity – Addo

INSTRUMENTAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Five Alarm Funk for Rock The Sky – Independent
Hugh Sicotte/Jon Ballantyne for Twenty Accident Free Work Days, Real Artist Works*Independent
Ian McDougall for The Very Thought Of You – Ten Mile*Independent
Pugs & Crows for Fantastic Pictures – Independent
Ratchet Orchestra for Hemlock – Drip Audio*Fontana North

DANCE RECORDING OF THE YEAR
Anjulie for You and I – Republic*Universal
Dragonette for Bodyparts – Universal
Felix Cartal D-Noy for Don’t Turn On The Lights ft. Polina – Muzik*Sony
Tricky Moreira for Hello Hello Hello – Blue Elephant*Independent
Vita Chambers for Fix You – Republic*Independent

R&B/SOUL RECORDING OF THE YEAR
Jully Black for Fugitive – Universal
Kreesha Turner for Tropic Electric – Universal
Melanie Fiona for Change the Record – Republic*Universal
Shawn Desman forNobody Does It Like You – Desman Inc.*Universal
The Weeknd for Trilogy – Republic*Universal

REGGAE RECORDING OF THE YEAR
Ammoye Flava for Radio – McGregor*Doubt
Elaine Lil’Bit Shepherd for Move Ya’ – Rebel Vibez*Independent
Exco Levi for Storms of Life – Silly Walks*Independent
Makeshift Innocence for Yours To Keep – Op3*Independent
Melanie Durrant for Made For Love – Relentless*Independent

ABORIGINAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR
BURNT-Project 1 for The Black List – Independent
Crystal Shawanda for Just Like You – New Sun*Fontana North
Don Amero for Heart On My Sleeve – Ramero Company*Independent
Donny Parenteau for Bring It On – On Ramp*Universal
Janet Panic for Samples – Independent

ROOTS & TRADITIONAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR: SOLO
Amelia Curran for Spectators – Six Shooter*Warner
Annabelle Chvostek for Rise – Borealis*eOne
Corb Lund for Cabin Fever – New West*Universal
Old Man Luedecke for Tender Is The Night – True North*eOne
Rose Cousins for We Have Made A Spark – Outside

ROOTS & TRADITIONAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR: GROUP
Elliott BROOD for Days Into Years – Paper Bag*Fontana North
Great Lake Swimmers for New Wild Everywhere – Nettwerk*Sony
Le Vent du Nord for Tromper le temps – Borealis*eOne
The Strumbellas for My Father and The Hunter – Independent*Fontana North
The Wooden Sky for Every Child A Daughter, Every Moon A Sun – Black Box*Fontana North

BLUES ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Colin James for FIFTEEN – Universal
Jack de Keyzer for Electric Love – Blue Star*Independent
Shakura S’Aida for Time – Electro-Fi*Outside
Steve Hill for Solo Recordings Volume One – Independent
Steve Strongman for A Natural Fact – Independent*Sonic Unyon

CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Colin Bernard for Hold On – Independent
Manafest for Fighter – Manafest*Fontana North
Newworldson for Rebel Transmission – Platinum Pop*David C. Cook
The City Harmonic for I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home) – Integrity*Provident
Thousand Foot Krutch for The End Is Where We Begin – TFK*Tone Tree

WORLD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Alex Cuba for Ruido en el Sistema – Caracol*Universal
Danny Michel for Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me – Six Shooter*Warner
Jaffa Road for Where The Light Gets In – Independent
Lorraine Klaasen for Tribute to Miriam Makeba – Justin Time*Universal
The Souljazz Orchestra for Solidarity – Strut*F>A>B

ELECTRONIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR (SPONSORED BY ROLAND)
Crystal Castles for Jiaolong – Last Gang*Universal
Grimes for Visions Arbutus* F>A>B
Purity Ring for Shrines – Last Gang*Universal
Trust Arts for TRST – & Crafts*Universal

METAL/HARD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Cancer Bats for Dead Set On Living – Distort*Universal
Castle for Blacklands – Prosthetic*Sony
Devin Townsend Project for Epicloud – HevyDevy*eOne
Ex Deo for Caligvla – Napalm*Fontana North
Woods of Ypres for Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light – Earache*eOne

ADULT CONTEMPORARY ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Adam Cohen for Like A Man – Rezolute*Universal
Barlow for Burning Days – Coalition*Warner
Céline Dion for Sans Attendre – Columbia*Sony
Raylene Rankin for All The Diamonds – Corvus*Outside
The Tenors for Lead With Your Heart – Universal

]]>Hosted by 81-year-old William Shatner, the Juno Awards ceremony in Ottawa Sunday night was an eclectic affair. It featured performances by musical acts as variable as Newfoundland indie rockers Hey Rosetta!, electro-house DJ Deadmau5 and a duet by Jim Cuddy and Sarah McLachlan.

Leslie Feist came away the big winner at the Juno Awards this weekend, taking away three trophies, including one for adult alternative album of the year and and artist of the year. “All I can do is express some genuine gratitude,” the singer told the audience at the televised ceremony.

Saskatoon roots-rockers The Sheepdogs also had a big night after a breakthrough year that saw them win a contest to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and tour extensively. In fact, they weren’t on hand to accept their awards—rock album of the year, new group of the year and single of the year for I Don’t Know—since they are currently on tour in Australia.

Meanwhile, Vancouver’s Dan Mangan won new artist of the year, even though he released his third full-length album, Oh Fortune, last year. And Michael Bublé’s collection of Christmas songs beat out Toronto rapper Drake’s Take Care to win album of the year.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/feist-sheepdogs-big-winners-at-juno-awards-and-buble-tops-drake/feed/1Will you be watching the Juno Awards?http://www.macleans.ca/culture/will-yoube-watching-the-juno-awards/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/will-yoube-watching-the-juno-awards/#commentsWed, 28 Mar 2012 16:02:42 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=246902Last year's Junos seemed suddenly credible to champions of both underground and established Canadian music

I can’t tell you exactly what I was doing on the night of March 27, 2011, but I can tell you what I wasn’t doing: watching the 40th annual Juno Awards. To Canadians who care passionately about music, and especially among critics (myself included), the Junos have been something of a joke. They traditionally ignore an exciting, stimulating underground Canadian music scene in favour of showering praise on has-been pseudo-celebrities and major-label acts whose careers are propped up solely and precariously by the magnanimous “CanCon” requirements of the CRTC.

I was surprised to hear some curious things the morning after the ceremony. The first was that in 2011, 40 years after the inaugural Juno Awards in 1971, more viewers tuned in to the show than ever before. And second, there were none of the usual musical simulacra—artists and bands with no discernible fan bases, and popularity that hinged on bought “buzz”—receiving the statuettes. Almost overnight, the Junos seemed suddenly credible to champions of both underground and established Canadian music.How had the Junos become watchable again,I wondered, when record sales have been steadily declining since 1999 to make less than half of what the music industry once earned?

Canada is in the midst of a musical renaissance, and last year the Junos seemed to acknowledge it. Drake, the Toronto rap wunderkind whose unpredictable rise to international celebrity was as baffling as it was gratifying, hosted the event; some of our best unsung talent, including Chromeo, Chilly Gonzales, Tokyo Police Club, and The Sadies were given performance slots; and the excellent and domestically unheralded Arcade Fire’s 2010 opus, The Suburbs, was named Album of the Year, albeit a month after it was recognized as such by the Grammys.

For the first time, the awards were bestowed upon artists whose hard work sorely deserved acknowledgement in Canada. Arcade Fire are legitimate global superstars who made it via hard work, dedication to their craft, and seized opportunities, while less mainstream acts like Shad, Caribou, and Karkwa — winners of the Rap, Electronic, and Francophone albums of the year, respectively — foretell a bright future for Canadian music.

The ailing music biz, it seemed, had leveled the playing field, so that The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), who adjudicate the awards, was forced to look beyond the RyanDans, Jann Ardens, and Nickelbacks to find artists worth celebrating. The Junos, it seems, work better under pressure. Musicians who worked hard touring, and whose art earned accolades by old-fashioned word of mouth spread by passionate fans, were selling a commendable number of records, at least enough to compete with the now-meagre sales of the mainstream. All that was left for CARAS to do was acknowledge it, and thankfully, they did.

Now, the Junos are at a crossroads. The past decade of music industry decline has forced CARAS to reconsider their place in the Canadian music scene, and given their formidable showing last year, and the viewership it inspired, their newfound interest in new and niche artists is something the awards show might do well to embrace.

That’s not to say they should go “indie”; that’s the territory of the Polaris Music Prize, the annual Canadian music award awarded to the best album of the year, “without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history,” since 2006. The prize, whether or not one agrees with the choices of the music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers that make up the deciding jury, has the independent music scene covered: bands and artists whose achievements are too modest for the Junos to acknowledge have a prize to aim for, and they earn a reasonable amount of press just for being shortlisted. But, after winning a Polaris Music Prize, to what should Canadian musicians aspire?

The answer should be the Juno Awards. Now is CARAS’ chance to capitalize on their success last year, and they seem to be doing so. The list of nominees demonstrates even more awareness of exciting artists who, in previous years, would certainly have been overlooked: Braids, Dan Mangan, Diamond Rings, Fucked Up, Timber Timbre, Destroyer, Drake, Feist, Austra, Duck Sauce, Tim Hecker, Junior Boys and Colin Stetson, to name a few. If you aren’t familiar with these performers, that’s okay — it makes perfect sense that the Junos would be the channel through which one hears of Canadian talent ready to graduate from the underground into the mainstream. Also making sense this year: the Junos rewarding the Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year, a genre long due for its own category.

It’s true that the Canadian talent crop can be thin, but right now, it’s bearing ripe fruit whose picking could yield a golden age of Canadian music. It’s already being lauded by some, and the industry needs to foster avenues for musicians to traverse before the rest of the world notices them, rather than after. The Polaris Prize represents the first step in this process, but it’s up to the Junos to turn our most talented musicians into household names — if not just in Canada, perhaps worldwide. I’ll be watching the 2012 Juno Awards on April 1, but whether or not I do so next year, or in, say, 2015, is up to CARAS.

Going into the gala for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize, two things were clear. First, Arcade Fire, who were nominated for The Suburbs, were the overwhelming favourite to take home the award. Gala host Grant Lawrence made it clear early in the evening when he suggested the Montreal band was facing off against “nine dark horses.” As a fellow scribe put it, Monday night’s contest was “Arcade Fire versus the world”—or at least, indie Canada.

Second, the Polaris Prize isn’t meant to be a popularity contest. The award’s only criterion is “artistic merit.” This was repeated like a mantra throughout the evening, lest anyone be under the impression that mainstream recognition, clever videos, or album sales might be in play at an awards show featuring bands most Canadians have never heard of. And therein lay the tension—how would the Polaris Prize jury reconcile the fact that Canada’s bestselling band might also be its best band? Can a band that sells out arenas and whose last album hit No. 1 in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. still be credible with the indie crowd?

The answer, evidently, is yes.

Prior to winning the 2011 Polaris Prize, Arcade Fire had left a trail of hopeful award nominees in its wake. Over the past 12 months, the band has added a Grammy, two Brit Awards and a Juno to its trophy mantel. But the Polaris Prize is an altogether different beast. The nominees are picked by a jury of over 200 music critics, writers, bloggers, and broadcasters from across Canada. The winner is then selected by a grand jury of 11 during the gala itself. While a half-dozen of the 10 short-list nominees—including Ron Sexsmith, Austra, Galaxie, Timber Timbre, Braids, and Hey Rosetta!—were playing brief two-song sets for the crowd of about 500 in the ballroom of Toronto’s Masonic Temple, the grand jury was sequestered in a room a few floors up and left to argue among themselves until they settled on a final verdict.

Of course, music critics being music geeks at heart, their tastes tend toward the subversive, the weird, the obscure—the more left-field the better. Which explains how the prospect of a backlash against a band like Arcade Fire, as appreciated as it is by both music snobs and the mainstream, could gain traction. Lead singer Win Butler pre-emptively flicked at the unusual predicament his band’s star status had left them in when he took the stage before the winner was announced. “Just because you know a band,” he said, “doesn’t mean it sucks.”

It’s easy to see why Butler might get defensive. The Polaris Prize is, after all, a symbol of the stratification that’s happened to the music industry over the past two decades. Whereas Canadian bands may have once looked to mainstream success as the ultimate badge of recognition, the Polaris Prize caters almost exclusively to those toiling under the industry’s radar. “This isn’t weird to me,” Katie Stelmanis, lead singer of the synth-heavy, goth-inflected Austra, said in a pre-gala interview. “It’s the Junos that are weird.”

As a result of its focus on artistic credibility, the Polaris Prize ends up serving the dual, sometimes paradoxical roles of cocoon and showcase for the nominees. For some, like Stelmanis, it protects artists from having to cater to lowest-common-denominator mainstream tastes. For others, like the famously underappreciated singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, it’s an opportunity to finally break through. “I set out to make a hit record,” he says of his Polaris-nominated Long Player Late Bloomer.

So what happens when Arcade Fire, which needs neither the exposure nor the credibility that come with a Polaris Prize, goes home with the $30,000 cheque? Does it change the nature of the award? “I hope not,” says Steve Jordan, the founder and executive director of the Polaris Music Prize. “There’s no doubt that this is the biggest-selling band that’s ever won the Polaris and certainly that’s going to extend our reach. But it’s not our objective to have that kind of reach.”

So don’t go thinking you have good taste in music just because you liked The Suburbs, too.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/okay-but-it-wont-happen-again/feed/1Sarah Slean’s sea changehttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/sarahs-sea-change/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/sarahs-sea-change/#commentsThu, 08 Sep 2011 17:45:09 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=212415Slean closes the crisis chapter of her life with an ambitious new double album that soars

Sarah Slean lives for her flourishes. After laying down the vocals for a track called The Cosmic Ballet—an elaborate cut from her upcoming double album Land & Sea—she kicks off her heels and runs over to listen to the playback with a kid-at-Christmas grin. It’s evident that the state-of-the-art studio in Toronto’s east end where she’s working has become Slean’s playground. While it is populated by a 23-piece orchestra and a room filled with middle-aged recording experts, everyone remains silent until Slean’s ear makes a call. Around the three-minute mark—just when the song hits its string-heavy climax—she turns to the pack of engineers futzing about with buttons and knobs and jubilantly says: “Gentlemen, more bells and whistles, please!”

Think this sounds like a scene straight out of a Judy Garland picture? Slean would be delighted by the thought. In fact, much of the 34-year-old Pickering, Ont., native’s inspiration is fuelled by old Hollywood musicals. “If you listen closely to the chords off the soundtracks to those Garland and Hepburn-type movies, you realize the genius at work there,” she says, two months later in a café on the other side of town. “On the surface,” she explains, the songs in films like The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz “are grand and whimsical, but underneath them, there is this real intensity. I’m attracted to that sense of mastery.”

Set for a Sept. 27 release, Land & Sea is chock full of the singer’s taste for opulence. “I have dreamed of most of them,” she says of the catalogue of songs from her past six albums, including radio favourites such as Sweet Ones (from her 2002 disc Night Bugs); Mary (from 2004’s Day One) and Get Home (from 2008’s The Baroness). “And I dreamed up most of this new album as well. I just hope the songs come out as vivid as I remember them.”

For Land & Sea, Slean was dreaming so deeply she felt motivated to craft two albums at once. “It’s almost as if two different people were writing two different albums,” she says of the song segregation, noting that the title has nothing to do with where the songs were born geographically. “They just come from two different families.”

Slean’s trek to Land & Sea has admittedly come after a few hard knocks. Although she’s been in the business for more than 13 years and come to terms with the fact that her music will most likely never muster Céline Dion-type sales, Slean has also had to contend with being compared to the other Sarahs in the Can-pop market. “I raged against people saying I sounded like Sarah McLachlan or Sarah Harmer. I was also angry people compared me to Tori Amos. The reason I was angry was I was unsure of who I was. Now I have a sense of certainty of what I can make. There is finally no hesitation.”

Personally, Slean has also had her share of troubled experiences. “The period of 25 to 29 was rough for me,” Slean reveals. “It was a time in my life where I hated myself. I tried writing about it in Shadowlands,” she says, referring to a track from her last studio album, The Baroness, the lyrics of which touch on issues of anorexia and alcohol abuse. “I was being a complete tyrant. I remember moving to Paris to find myself and having a moment of clarity before coming home where I promised to stop beating myself up. I finally realized if I continued the way I was going, I wouldn’t last.”

Closing a chapter on what she jokingly refers to as a “twi-sis” (her emotional crisis in her twenties) in The Baroness, Slean began writing the grand arrangements and heady lyrics found on Land & Sea soon after. Her imagination was given a literary vitamin-B shot from the type of images found in books such as Leo Tolstoy’s Confession, Tom Harpur’s Water Into Wine and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. “A lot of Land & Sea came from the amount of reading I’ve done over the past six years,” she says, noting she just finished a degree in philosophy and music at the University of Toronto. “My program had me studying neuroscience, Christian mysticism and Buddhist philosophy, as well as reading works which explore the way religion relates to the brain.”

After finishing her degree, Slean promptly focused on Land & Sea. The tracks seem to have come together at a pivotal time in her life: Slean was getting used to being a married woman. Having wed pop singer Royal Wood (real name John Royal Wood Nicholson) in 2009, she started fighting doubts once again. “When I first got married, I almost had a spiritual meltdown!” Slean says with a chuckle. “I thought, what have I just done? I’ve lost everything! The whole story of who I am is centred around being this individual artist! And now what?”

It wasn’t long before Slean and her 33-year-old husband both realized the value of being in a relationship with a partner who has a similar occupation. “Although we don’t want to be known as a musical couple and we’ve been trying to keep our lives separate in the press, we trust each other’s ears fully,” she says. The comfort level is such that Slean asked her husband to co-produce one of the songs on Land (which she says touches on “our generation’s oversharing obsessions”), called Everybody’s on TV. “It’s gotten to the point where [Royal] and I show each other everything—masks are always off—and that includes romantic songs about other people. It’s uncomfortable, but we have a healthy understanding.”

Slean first recognized Wood’s boyfriend potential during the recording of a song on her previous disc called Looking for Someone. “I invited all these male vocalists to my house because I wanted them as backup voices for the song,” she recalls. “One by one they were coming by and I was wearing pyjamas, zip-up sweater and a ponytail, and then when [Royal] knocked on the door, it was like I saw him for the first time. Not long before this happened, I remember being backstage at the Harbourfront and Royal was playing the same night. I could hear him having a fight with his girlfriend and at the same time I was dealing with an ex who was being a complete tool.”

Another creative turning point for Slean was her parting ways with Warner Music, her record company for a decade. Although she maintains that “the label was supportive and not constraining me creatively,” Slean admits to feeling “a real sense of emancipation” from the separation. “Now,” she says of the change, “my only focus is making what I hear in my head instead of meeting with a label to discuss making it economically happen for them.”

Slean’s choice to “go indie” after agreeing to break it off with Warner and signing on with Toronto’s Pheromone Recordings did not stop her from going bigger with her sound. One of the first things she did after the label split was choose Toronto’s Revolution Recording studios for Sea. The spectacularly outfitted brand-new facility was then filled with a hand-picked troop of players from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and two extremely different music producers. For Land, Slean sought out Juno-winning rock musician Joel Plaskett to spike the melodies on tracks such as I Am A Light and Girls Hating Girls.

The latter track, which includes the line “30-something can be one big high school,” is Slean’s take on adult girlfriend rivalry. “Why do women insist on competing with each other?” she asks. “Why do they have this tendency to want to tear each other down? Sometimes I feel we have such a tall-poppy syndrome, so I wanted to explore this Lordess of the Flies-type pecking order, which happens with some women in their thirties. That rehashing of their morally underdeveloped days in high school is fascinating.”

For Sea, Slean asked composer Jonathan Goldsmith—known for making soundtracks for films such as Away From Her and Casino Jack—to co-produce the bulk of her tracks, in hopes of capturing a cinematic soundscape. The result of choosing Goldsmith is best heard on Sea’s most poignant track, The One True Love, in which sweeping violins adorn Slean’s unique view on the subject.

“I don’t see [Prince William] and Kate’s wedding as romance, just TV. I wish them every happiness but I didn’t wake up to watch it. My version of romance would be a quote from Joni Mitchell—‘Love is touching souls.’ One True Love is about the partnership I’m in now with [Royal],” she explains. “For either partner, there is a one true love and it’s not the other. Life’s love of itself comes first.”

It’s a sub-zero Sunday evening in Toronto. Under an unheated canopy, a gang of fledgling rock stars wait their turn on the red carpet, shivering in T-shirts and black leather. They’re Down With Webster, a Toronto rock-rap band of twentysomething sensations whose album, Time To Win, has scored a string of platinum hits. The occasion is the 40th anniversary of the Juno Awards at the Air Canada Centre. The band will get to kick off the show, which is a big deal for them. Earlier in their dressing room, these amiable pop idols had been finessing last-minute details, planning a run from the stage into the crowd and voting down a plea from the drummer to shoot video during the performance for the band’s Facebook page. Then, after correcting their hair, rummaging about for their sunglasses, and freshening their breath with gum from a bowl on the buffet table, they head outside, so they can re-enter via the red carpet.

Huddled in the cold beside the Barenaked Ladies, the boys wait for their cue, as Drake, the show’s emcee, is whisked through with his entourage. “Twenty-two years for this s–t!” yells Ed Robertson of the Ladies. “My Junos are getting cold!” He’s joking. But there is something so forlornly Canadian about frozen rock stars queuing up for their turn on a red carpet. When Down With Webster finally gets the nod, pandemonium erupts. Throngs of young teenage girls, pressed against the barricades with outstretched arms, scream their names at an ear-splitting pitch: the sound of Beatlemania, or Biebermania, on a smaller scale.

Later, a grizzled old dude in a long black coat, black hat and red scarf enters to a decidedly less hysterical response. Many of the kids don’t even recognize Neil Young.

For Canadian pop music, the Junos’ ruby anniversary marked a ritual passing of the torch, from the boomer icons of Young’s generation to the world of Drake, Arcade Fire and Justin Bieber. The full pantheon was not on hand: Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, k.d. lang, Céline Dion and Alanis Morissette were present only in video clips. So Neil, making his first Juno appearance in 29 years, was the designated patriarch, basking in tributes and dispensing wit and wisdom like a wily old philosopher king. Shania Twain, a vision of chiffon and sequins, played homecoming queen. And shoring up the old guard were Bryan Adams, Robbie Robertson, Daniel Lanois, Randy Bachman, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and two-thirds of Rush.

The weird thing is, none of those living legends deigned to perform. It’s as if Grandpa Neil had tossed the keys to the family car over to the kids and said, “You drive.”

Photographs by Jessica Darmanin

For years, critics have carped that the Junos were out of touch with contemporary Canadian music. Last week a cruel cover line in Toronto’s Eye Weekly barked: “Step off, Anne Murray,” referring to a woman with a record haul of 24 Junos. It’s true that in past years the Junos often seemed like a major-label cabal of self-congratulation, recycling the old warhorses while snubbing indie acts like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. But this year, both orchestral collectives were out in force. And Arcade Fire, flush with its Grammy victory, emerged the champion, winning four Junos—for best album, group, songwriter, and alternative album. But Young held his own. As well as receiving the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award, he beat out Bieber for artist of the year and won adult alternative album for Le Noise (created with Lanois, who won producer of the year).

Young, who seemed as mystified as anyone by the “adult alternative” label, said, “I’m an adult, there’s no alternative.” And backstage, when a journalist asked if he ever expected to share a category with Bieber, he replied: “Of course I’m in the same category. I’m not in the same time zone.”

The first Junos staged in Toronto in a decade, the CTV show unfolded like an intergenerational love-in, as younger musicians paid homage to their elders, and the town Canada loves to hate received its due as an unsung music capital—the cradle of so many ’60s legends. A phalanx of Toronto musicians performed heartfelt covers of classics by Young, Mitchell, Lightfoot and the Band. And as the hometown host, Drake gamely slipped into the role of a retro emcee and milked the generation gap—from doing pre-taped schtick with Lloyd Robertson and Bieber to teaching rap moves to seniors in a retirement home.

Photographs by Jessica Darmanin

The Junos are the one Canadian awards show that people actually watch—a record 2.4 million viewers tuned in Sunday night. And even with the Toronto focus, the show gleamed with a national pride that made you realize our music legends are, by default, Canada’s cultural royalty. Our movie stars have been absorbed by Hollywood, our TV stars are parochial, and despite the international prestige of CanLit, reading is largely a solitary pleasure. But in the past four decades, wave upon wave of Canadian singers and bands have achieved worldwide success, with a diversity of music that amounts to an emotional cardiogram of the country.

When Twain stepped onstage to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, she positively gushed about the talent of her compatriots. “I have more pride in what this country has created musically than I have even of my own success,” she said. “I feel like I should just be wearing the Canadian flag tonight. I love our lakes, I love our bush… ?” At which point, laughter ricocheted through the mostly male throng of journalists in the media room backstage. Moments later, as Twain fielded questions from them, a blogger told her that the twitterverse was abuzz with her “bush” reference. She was stunned. “Where have you guys been? C’mon, I’m from northern Ontario. It’s called the bush.”

This being Canada, the media were too polite to grill Twain about her divorce from Mutt Lange, or her recent marriage to Frederic Thiebaud, the ex-husband of her friend Marie-Ann Thiebaud, who was alleged to have had an affair with Lange. I did, however, ask about her Oprah deal, to turn her story into a TV series, coming out in tandem with her autobiography this spring. “It’s not a reality show,” she said firmly, perhaps to avoid any confusion with Alaskan bush diva Sarah Palin. “It’s a documentary-type thing.” Twain has said the breakup left her unable to sing, but “you’re going to hear new music soon,” she promised. “I’m glad to be back to songwriting, back to expressing myself.”

As the top-selling female singer in history prepares to launch Shania 2.0, Neil Young stays the course, oddly immune to his own celebrity. But at the Junos he warmed to the elder statesman role. Unusually loquacious backstage, he launched into a virtual manifesto on how music should be streamed online for free. And he gave a homespun sermon on “this humanitarian-y kind of thing” from the stage. “Musicians,” he advised, “should not worry about helping others. They should focus on the music first. Because music is the language of love. In this world there are so many distractions, and TV, and people telling you what’s going on and how people all hate each other. It’s like perfume on a dirty body. You just have to look inside yourself and the eyes of your friends and you’ll find the secret of how to be a humanitarian.” Perfume on a dirty body? Don’t expect to see that in a self-help book anytime soon.

Later, I cornered Robbie Robertson and asked if there’s such a thing as a Canadian sound. “A lot of Canadian songs are very grown-out-of-the-ground,” he said. “Years ago, when I was playing with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks on Yonge Street, Neil and Joni were playing Yorkville for people sipping cappuccinos. There was no one sipping cappuccinos where we were. But even though we were on different sides of the tracks, there was a unity. Music was warming up to become the voice of a generation and we needed to join forces to make that noise to possibly make a difference. I kinda miss that today.”

Which made me wonder what kind of difference a band like Down With Webster is making, stoking the crowd with branded anthems like Time to Win, while waving a DWW flag reminiscent of the Volks­wagen logo. So I asked another elder, Daniel Lanois—who, with his straw hat and sly grin, looked like the crazy uncle of this anniversary bash. “They’re doing very innovative work, a real mixture of things,” he said. “Certain aspects of what we do are still alive as a new frontier. You can mix the alphabet any way you want, so poetry is on the rise. That’s what I like about rap and hip hop: it’s a licence to be poetic.” What about the flag? The former U2 producer shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a flag has been used. Some Irishmen would remember something about that in the ’80s.”

Face of the week
PUMPED UP: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden rallies female student athletes at George Washington University in Washington

J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

A week in the life of Gordon Campbell
His party lags badly in the polls, with almost half of B.C. voters leaning toward the NDP. Yet Campbell marches on. Friday he said he’d miss a Surrey Sikh parade with radical undertones. Sunday he learned he’d receive the Canadian Olympic Order for his support of the Vancouver Games. Monday—way up in northeast B.C.—he announced plans for a 900-megawatt dam project on the Peace River. Tuesday he opened a new Pixar studio in Gastown. Sounds like a last lap to us.

GOOD NEWS

Rain or shine
Neither the soupy fog in St. John’s nor the ash from an Icelandic volcano could derail the Juno Awards. Despite early fears of transportation chaos, the awards show came off a success (and we can’t help but feel heartened that K’Naan, who performed his inspirational Wavin’ Flag, was a big winner). Fears the volcanic ash would shutter the airport did prompt several Tory MPs to jump on special, late-night flights after the show, leaving their Liberal counterparts fuming they missed leaving town early. But given the choice between a return to Ottawa and another night celebrating on George Street, we think we’d take the latter.

The rights stuff
The head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has a solution to concerns that human rights proceedings have become a kangaroo court. Let the real courts take over. Last week, David Arnot said he’d prefer to abolish the province’s human rights tribunal and give the job of hearing complaints to the Court of Queen’s Bench. Arnot argues human rights law has become so complex it requires the attention of real judges. Such a move would also provide a clearer separation of powers between the commission and the adjudication of cases. It’s a step in the right direction. Human rights tribunals were never supposed to be courts—just conciliators. Could common sense soon emerge as a basic human right in Canada?

A fearless leader
At a speech given in the Congo, attended by the country’s president and military leaders, Governor General Michaëlle Jean spoke out against wartime use of rape as a weapon must not go unpunished. Jean continues to be a fearless and passionate representative of this country, even as she nears the end of her term and fascination attends the question of her replacement. That interest is a credit to her work and populist appeal. The downside? Internet sites are suggesting candidates like Leonard Cohen and William Shatner. As the Queen’s representative? Please.

The kids are alright
Two Winnipeg teachers who performed a routine closely resembling a lap dance at a school pep rally are out of work. One resigned, the other’s contract won’t be renewed. “It was disturbing,” one teen student said of the dance, viewed by millions on YouTube. We long for the days when teachers were dignified—even intimidating—rather than trying to be hip. It’s gratifying the students knew inappropriate behaviour when they saw it. Maybe good taste is inborn and stays intact, no matter what they see at school.

BAD NEWS

Bawdy politic

Saskatchewan Party MLA Serge LeClerc, a former gangland criminal who found God in jail and became a motivational speaker, has come under increasing scrutiny. One NDP member said LeClerc gave him the finger and menaced him outside the legislature. On Friday, the CBC said it received a package containing a recording of a man who sounds like LeClerc discussing recent cocaine use and sex with a man. Though he’d secured his party’s riding nomination and had pursued the process into April, LeClerc—who denies everything—quit caucus, and says he’d planned to leave politics all along. The premier has sent the allegations to police. Whatever comes of this, it’s a regrettable spectacle.

Out of control
Toyota paid a US$16.4-million fine to U.S. safety regulators to settle complaints over sticky accelerator pedals. That should have marked the end of the recall nightmare for the world’s top automaker. Yet the problems keep coming. Toyota was forced to stop selling one of its Lexus SUVs over a report the truck can lose control in high-speed cornering. Worse, a simmering internal dispute between the Toyoda family and company executives went public as the two sides traded blame. It once looked like Toyota’s good name was being unfairly tarnished. Now, we’re not so sure.

Pew says: Pee-u!
Republicans and Democrats can’t play nice. On Saturday, President Barack Obama accused Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of launching a “cynical and deceptive” attack against a measure designed to tame Wall Street. Not exactly bipartisan. For its part, the GOP is using the very real issue of America’s faulty financial system to score points. So goes U.S. politics these days, and Americans are understandably perturbed. A Pew Research Center survey says just 22 per cent believe they can trust Washington “almost always or most of the time”—a historic low; almost a third think the government is a threat to personal freedom.

Out of their tree
A British court fined a hotel $3,100 after health and safety investigators found the owners had failed to carry out a “risk assessment” on the dangers of sawing a tree branch with a ladder leaning against it. Peter Aspinall, the 63-year-old handyman, fell 14 feet after sawing through the branch. The hotel had pleaded guilty to the breaches, and Aspinall is now pursuing a civil suit. Still, the hotel’s solicitor expressed disappointment that “common sense did not prevail” in the ruling. “It is an unusual accident,” he said. “Laurel and Hardy do that sort of thing.”

]]>The Juno Awards telecast is not about handing out hardware. It’s part genuine musical celebration, part industry backslapping, part CTV cross-promotional orgy, part high school pep rally and/or provincial tourism ad, with as many live performances as possible squeezed into a tightly run two-hour slot.

Which means that 90 per cent of the awards are presented at a non-televised dinner the night before: everything from album packaging of the year to artist of the year. By the time the telecast started, many of my favourite albums of 2009 had already won Junos: Bell Orchestre for instrumental album of the year (As Seen Through Windows), Charles Spearin for contemporary jazz album of the year (The Happiness Project), Billy Talent for rock album of the year (III), and K’naan for artist of the year. After decades of grumbling about the Junos, this was the first year I was predisposed to genuinely enjoy them.

And yet they disappointed again—not because they were awful, but because they weren’t. Normally they are a combination of the painful and the ever-so-slightly profound, thanks to the cheap commercialization and the glimpses of comparatively obscure artists getting a shot in prime time. If we’re lucky, someone makes a decent speech. The 2010 Junos, by comparison, were like lithium: no highs, no lows, just even keel.

One wonders what the cranky and notorious nationalist Stompin’ Tom Connors would have thought of the opening sequence, where Halifax hip-hop MC Classified marched down George Street in St. John’s, rapping a track called O Canada, a completely earnest lyrical litany of patriotic platitudes waiting to be spun into a tourism ad.

As if to immediately illustrate the evening’s diversity—or, more likely, to comfort anyone over 40 who was bewildered by Classified—the show quickly shifted inside to Michael Bublé, who kicks it REALLY old school. He soon wins single of the year for Haven’t Met You Yet—which, in his acceptance speech, he claims he wrote for his fiancé. Was he stalking her at the time? Is she a mail-order bride?

The Barenaked Ladies take the stage to a) announce that they have a new album and b) assure everyone that they are not the hosts of the show. In fact, there are no hosts. Which, for the absence of Russell Peters alone, is a great idea.The always-deadpan keyboardist Kevin Hearn promises, with noticeably forced enthusiasm, “It’s going to be a great night!” (Doesn’t he mean a good, good night? Aren’t these guys supposed to be pop-culture savvy?)

Tween-pop sensation Justin Bieber performs with only an acoustic guitarist and four male back-up singers and a guest spot from Drake. Say what you will about the puppy-dog eyes and Donny Osmond teeth, the boy can sing, and that swagger coach of his is earning his paycheque. Too bad Bieber’s singing a song with the chorus “I’m like, baby, baby, baby.” Because he looks like baby!

The “action” moves back outside to George Street, where Kim Stockwood and Damhnait Doyle once again have head-scratching Canadians asking: are these two famous for anything other than being the token Newfoundlanders on CBC radio shows and CTV event television? Fellow cutie Newfie (and CTV personality) Seamus O’Regan shows up to help them all agree that St. John’s is amazing.

Bublé wins the corporate-sponsored fan choice award—do baby boomers actually vote online?—and makes a lame product placement joke in his acceptance speech. By this point in the evening, he’s starting to overstay his welcome, and the next performer proves why. Johnny Reid is a platinum-selling country artist here in Canada, but he just landed an international deal and is planning on making an R&B album. His song Dance With Me is more John McDermott than Johnny Cash, but listening to this guy sing with twice the depth and soul of the cheezeball Bublé, it sounds like he can do anything he wants—as long as he learns some new stage gestures that don’t look like he’s a karaoke king at his local bar, rather than a veteran performer.

Billy Talent are not only the loudest band at this year’s Junos, they’re also the only one performing a song about a Paulo Coehlo novel. They’ve come a long way since their first Juno performance several years back, when Ben Kowalewicz’s shrieking was as much a challenge to old Juno orthodoxy as the first hip-hop performances were. These days, there’s no denying Billy Talent’s melodic strength, and Kowalewicz is sounding more like the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra. But he still lets out a high-pitched screech near the end of Saint Veronika—and you would too, if you were a punk rocker who just lost a category to Michael Bublé.

K’naan, named artist of the year at the earlier ceremony is, as always, the most dapper man in the entire room. He’s there to present Bryan Adams with the honorary humanitarian award; Adams, in an apparently biblical mood of generosity, says, “Thank you, Canaan.” Adams is stranded in Europe because of the Icelandic volcano; by video link, he gives a gracious and humble acceptance speech that puts a nice dent in his often prickly reputation. Speaking of gracious and humble, K’naan soon returns to the stage to pick up songwriter of the year—which is well deserved, not just for Wavin’ Flag, but for the fact that he’s one of the most compelling MCs working in hip-hop today, who can write circles around most of his peers, including Drake.

At the halfway point in the ceremony, this year’s Junos are nowhere near the shitshow they were last year, easily the most embarrassing in recent memory (and there’s a lot of competition there). Where are the terrible jokes, the awkward moments, the uncomfortable presenters, the ridiculously over-the-top performances? Why does everyone actually look happy to be there? Can this actually be the Junos?

For a brief moment, it looks like the Olympics, because skeleton athlete Jon Montgomery is standing on the street in a throng of excited, patriotic Canadians, amiably joking with Kim Stockwood and Damhnait Doyle—and with more charisma than either of them put together. He demonstrates his day job skills as an auctioneer by taking bids on Justin Bieber’s phone number and Jim Cuddy’s hotel room key. “This could go on for a while,” Doyle deadpans. Maybe it should—I hereby nominate Montgomery to host the 2010 Junos.

Great Lake Swimmers are a band I never thought I’d see playing the Junos. Not because they don’t deserve it—Tony Dekker is one of the most haunting Canadian songwriters of the last 10 years—but because I once saw their former keyboardist fall asleep on stage. Stadium rock they’re not (nor should they be). Here, however, they do their best, despite a poor sound mix and the fact that the cameraman is clearly more fixated on violinist and backing singer Miranda Mulholland than anyone else in the band, including Dekker.

Every year that the Junos has been held somewhere outside of Ontario, a provincial premier makes a token appearance. For whatever reason, Danny Williams is featured standing innocuously and unannounced somewhere in the middle of the crowd—as if a camera crew just happened to find him there—and only allowed to throw to a commercial. Heritage Minister James Moore, who always looks uncomfortable in the presence of real-life performers, co-presents the award for best new artist. Thankfully, they pair him with fabulously flamboyant loudmouth Jully Black, who all but ignores his painfully earnest introduction by turning around and whooping it up for the crowd: “N-F-L-D! Make some noise!” Moore looks pleasantly baffled that he’s witnessed what these mysterious creative people call an “off-script” moment. They present the award to Drake, who beats Bieber in the only real horserace of the night. Drake thanks his mom, who “is responsible for not only the artist that I am, but the man that I am.” Aw, shucks.

Metric celebrate their win for group of the year—over tough competition from Billy Talent, The Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo—by singing “gimme sympathy after all this is gone.” Looks like they won’t need it: they’re poster children for international indie success, being, according to their intro, the first band in history to have a Top 20 U.S. single from a self-released album. (Later we learn that April Wine was the first Canadian band to go platinum with an independent album—indie rock is nothing new, kids.) What would Stompin’ Tom have to say about that?

It’s now 80 minutes into the show, and Great Big Sea finally show up. They’re introducing their early benefactors Blue Rodeo, who have every right to phone it in at this point of their career—and yet they don’t, performing a delicate and sparse Jim Cuddy ballad that’s easily one of the best songs he’s written in his 25-year career.

The show starts to grind to a halt. April Wine is inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Drake performs his mediocre new single, Over (“What am I doin’? / I’m doin’ me”). He then wins for best rap recording, which comes with a catch: he has to hug every member of Hedley, who present him with the award. Is any Juno worth that? Drake says, “I do this because I believe in all forms of music that come from Canada.” Don’t hold your breath for a Johnny Reid collab.

Milking their post-Olympic glow, CTV trots out Alexandre Bilodeau to present the album of the year award, introducing him as “the king of freestyle.” (All you hip-hop MCs watch your back!) The adorable Bilodeau gets a larger cheer than any single performer or presenter has all night, and also gets the biggest laugh when he announces that the winner is “Michael Bubble!” Buble, having exhausted his thank-you list several times already, thanks Ron Sexsmith, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and his grandma.

The 2010 Junos wrap up with K’naan performing his anthemic Waving Flag with special guests Drake, Nikki Yanofsky, and Justin Bieber—the latter putting special emphasis on the line “when I get older”—appearing only on the final chorus, making it less of an all-inclusive, roof-raising, Tears Are Not Enough-style closer than it could have been. Damhnait Doyle signs off: “With pride, from Newfoundland and Labrador!” One can’t help but think she wakes up every morning saying that.

The camera then lingers on her and Stockwood dancing awkwardly on George Street, in a spotlight surrounded by hundreds of Newfoundlanders not sure what they’re supposed to be looking at by this point. Neither are we.